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Farmer's Market Week 21 (Pane Maggiore)

November 24, 2013 - 9:32am

golgi70

Farmer's Market Week 21 (Pane Maggiore)

Well it's technically over. My experiment has concluded. Yesterday was the last of the farmer's markets and I made it to 21 of 26 of the markets with bread to trade. I've made some friends and had a really good time trading food for food. In honor I offered my loaves as gifts yesterday in appreciation of the farmers who were happy and willing to trade with me. This didn't go so well as they still pushed food at me. But i tried. Furthermore they have added a winter market to start next week so I guess it never ends. Yay. But I'll feel better about missing some now that the summer has ended and trading bread in the rain will be trickier.

I decided to revisit Pane Maggiore from week 6 as it was one of my households favorites of the season. I stuck to the true recipe the first time around but didn't leave myself and notes. Now I have notes to add. Only 7.9% of the flour is prefermented and for 18 hours which certainly adds a lot of flavor to this loaf. About .3% yeast is added to the dough and I assume its to make up for the small amount of starter and I followed suit. The original also calls for retarding the shaped loaves and baking them cold, which is perfect for my setup. I shaped them at 8pm and retarded immediately. Woke up for some water a few hours before I intended to get started (3 am) I took a peek and they were blowing up in the fridge. Fortunately the oven was preheated and ready to go. So I got to it at once. They were on the cusp of overproofing but I think they just got to a cold enough state where the activity had nearly ceased. In hind site I think something similar happened last time as well. Should have taken notes. I blame the freshly milled flour and the quantity of yeast. If I do this loaf again I will cut the pinch of yeast down to a 1/3 at .1% and see if that mellows it out.

It truly is a marvelous loaf. Moist open crumb with tons of flavor from the long wheat perferment and the most amazing crunchy crisp crust with the awesome chew that I attribute to the rye. At 86% hydration this is a tricky dough to handle but well worth the work behind it.

I also made extra loaves to bring over to a new friends house to bake in his WFO. It's a domed oven more suitable for pizza but he's a mason and we will tinker with temps, timing, and steaming until we get some really nice loaves. The loaves baked in my home oven took about 35 minutes to bake. In the WFO (which was too hot I suppose) took 17 minutes to bake.

Both times I've made this loaf I've considered that option. But with the low amount of pre fermented flour and the desire to follow the very old recipe to the "T" (apparently it was shared by an old woman who made the bread). Since the first results were amazing I again followed suit. I think a smaller amount will give the same result desired, yet as you said prevent over fermenting.

There is certainly a difference in loaves made from just sourdough and then the combination. Particularly in the crust of the loaf from my experience. I'm sure there are many differences. I ponder the change of sugar remaining in the dough and type must be varied based on how the LABS/commercial yeast feeding differences throughout the fermentation and thus a different crust? I've had similar results with my baguette experiments and still to date the best baguettes I've made or purchased for that matter, are made with a combination of yeast and starter.

have an artisan WFO look to them :-) Even if baked fast and too hot, Lucy bets they taste better than the ones made at home? I'm with Ian. The commercial yeast is just getting in the way and not adding much to the bake taste wise either. Good thing the market is staying open. After 6 cloudy days with massive rain, the sun finally came out today. There sure was an abundance of salad fixings in the garden since it wasn't picked for a few days :-)

Not often that Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah fall on the same day so enjoy then both Josh can't wait to taste the stollen!

I will have to try a batch with the smaller qty of yeast against a batch with no added yeast and compare. The loaves in the WFO obviously went in too hot. Some adjustments were talked about and we will continue baking together as he is very interested to learn about bread making to improve is oven building ability. It's too bad it's domed as that just will never help with steam retention but we'll work something out with some modifications. I'm excited to play with it more. Plus being able to bake 7-10 loaves at a clip is much nicer than 2. Maybe the thing I learned the most over this experience are the handicaps of the home baker that does know how to make good "dough". Really the cast iron cookers are the best results I've seen. Someone should design a cast iron frame that could be placed in any oven with the racks removed for bread baking. Could even be two small decks. then you could bake 4-6 loaves at a time. A door on front for opening and closing with strong latch to lock in upright position when needed. Then a lever with vents at the top. New project for ya dab

I love the WFO. Have you tried to wrap the oven door with a wet towel and as soon as all loaves are loaded? I did close the oven for first 10 minutes with a soaked wooden door with a very wet towel (after the oven has cooled down to around 280C before the bake). The wet towel gives extra steam inside the oven.

Thank you for posting your bake and I look forward to reading your many bakes in the future although the farmer market season is over.

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